Avellaneda, Grommon named O’Neill Professors

The Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs is proud to award two additional O’Neill Professorships to Claudia N. Avellaneda and Eric Grommon

Avellaneda, will use her O’Neill professorship to further enhance and deepen her work related to political operations, policy development, policy strategy, public management, and governance tools used by subnational governments in Latin America. Grommon is an applied criminologist whose research interests include corrections, offender reentry, and the rigorous evaluation of justice system programs, policies, and operations. He will use the O’Neill Professorship to advance his research that explores racial and ethnic disparities in the prosecution of criminal cases and traffic infractions.

Avellaneda is based on O’Neill’s Bloomington campus, and Grommon maintains his office on the Indianapolis campus.

“Professor Avellaneda and Professor Grommon have a passion for improving governance and societal well-being, and have both pursued exemplary, impactful research during their careers,” said Siân Mooney, dean of the O’Neill School. “They are richly deserving of being named O’Neill Professors, and we look forward to all they will accomplish to improve the lives of others in their upcoming years at the O’Neill School.”

Avellaneda is a Fischer Faculty Fellow at the O’Neill school and a residential fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science (CASBS) in Stanford University. She is editor of Local Government Studies as well as Faculty Affiliate at the Ostrom Workshop, the Department of Political Science, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from Texas A&M in College Station, Texas and joined the O’Neill School in 2013. Her research explores the drivers of governmental performance by focusing on the role of chief executives in Latin America subnational governments. She has extended this line of research to Brazilian, Honduran, Colombian, Chilean, Ecuadorian, Guatemalan, Mexican, and Salvadorian municipalities.

Grommon joined the O’Neill faculty in Indianapolis in 2012. He earned his Ph.D. in criminal justice from Michigan State University, and he previously served as a project manager for grant-funded research and evaluations of reentry initiatives, residence restriction laws, and strategic firearm violence and gang interventions. He has also worked for the state Statistical Analysis Centers of Michigan (Michigan Justice Statistics Center) and Illinois (Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority) to conduct policy-relevant research and analysis on justice issues pertinent to state and local government.

The O’Neill Professorship was established through a $30 million gift from IU alumnus Paul H. O’Neill in 2019. Other O’Neill Professors include Sanya Carley, Sean Nicholson-Crotty, and Douglas Noonan.